waitman writes: "Anyone else have their videos removed from YouTube prior
to receiving a DMCA notice from Viacom? Their claim of owning rights
to the "100k+" videos must be bogus, because one of my videos was
removed. I have to believe that there must be others.
I was using a video on YouTube to advertise my business, and I paid
the photographer to shoot and edit the video. To my knowledge this
video has never aired on television, and there is no reasonable
explanation for Viacom could believe they own the video.
A couple of unreasonable explanations come to mind, however none of
my opinions have been confirmed.
1) Viacom *arbitrarily* selected 100,000 videos and claimed ownership
just to make headlines, or or for whatever other reason.
2) A Viacom employee could have downloaded my movie from YouTube,
then aired part of it on whatever broadcast program (without my knowledge),
thus assuming ownership.
3) A simple mistake was made, and they inadvertantly targetted me.
4) A big mistake was made, and they inadvertantly targetted
thousands of users.
Regardless, it looks like the video is shut off until I hire an
attorney to file a rebuttal to their claim, which sounds
like a pain.
Your Opinions?
Here's an article for you.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_displa y/television/news/e3ib7466fcf6c98ca5623a55bb262824 d83
Take care,
Waitman Gobble
Los Altos, California"